


Poison Tree

by red_jeyne



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crucifixion, Fever, Infection, M/M, OC's - Freeform, hunger, unreality, worshipful devotee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_jeyne/pseuds/red_jeyne
Summary: The moon was huge, lantern-yellow. He passed the sentries. They did not see him, for his body was asleep in a farmhouse in Western Pennsylvania. Besides, he belonged here. He belonged to their Master.
Kudos: 6





	Poison Tree

For three days, the wolves had been following them.

Bo knew this instinctively at first, with a new sort of anxiety that made him look over his shoulder, hairs on his arms rising like vestigial hackles.

He talked to Charles about it by a dying fire, in the hushed tones they took on when the others were sleeping, or pretending to sleep.

“We’re not alone.” Bo jabbed a thumb behind them at the vast woods.

“I know,” Charles said. His nearly colorless eyes pulled from watching embers. His cheekbones were becoming sharper as the days turned to weeks. The shadows behind his eyes deepened, and his lips were chapped and dry as the rest of them.

Woodsmoke wafted past Bo’s face, thick with bark and pitch. He turned his head and blinked it away. “Well, last night they got close.”

Charles hocked indelicately and spit into the embers. “Yuht.” He said, a flat New England affirmation that always sounded half-swallowed to Bo. “I could smell ‘em.”

“Do you think they’d hurt anyone? Are they just after scraps?”

“Depends how hungry they are,” Charles replied dreamily. “I guess maybe one of us… if we were all by our lonesome. One of the weaker ones.”

“Hey, c’mon,” Bo hissed, looking over his shoulder at their companion’s sleeping forms. The fire popped and hissed. Above their scattered sleeping bags and makeshift pillows, spruce and birch trees swayed against the sky. “We don’t want to scare them, man.”

Charles Fairweather raised his colorless, lidded eyes once more, smiling with the corner of his mouth. “Better scared than ea-ten.” He said in a sing-song. “You can’t sugarcoat anymore, Bo. That’s dead and gone, just like everything else. You want to protect them? Tell them the truth. Just like we told Mr Landon.”

There it was again. Their late companion, Mr Landon. Bo tried not to think of that day in New Hampshire, with the scenic rolling hills and red-roofed barn, the weathervane oscillating as Charles’ shot rang out and the girls clung to one another with averted eyes. Mr Landon’s blood had soaked the driveway.

Bo thought of the yellow eyes he’d seen through the trees, the patch of black fur that had been there and then gone, the gamey smell on the air.

He thought of Samir, who was quiet as a ghost and looked to Bo and Charles for direction. For protection too, Bo thought, though he trailed them from a safe distance like a wolf himself.

“I should tell Samir. If he hasn’t noticed them by now, too,” Bo said quietly.

Charles poked a half-burnt branch with the toe of his boot. “Sure. You tell your little Capser and I’ll tell the girls. In the meantime,” he patted the sling that held a gun tucked against his ribs. “Peeper’s peeled, Beaudry. I want a wolf pelt for winter.”

 _Winter._ There was no way they could travel in _winter,_ not on their current course. They’d have to stop heading west and trek significantly south, and he didn’t much like the idea of that until they’d cleared the densely populated east and gotten into Ohio.

 _If_ he did drop a wolf, and if he even knew how to properly skin and tan a hide, he’d give it to Samir in a heartbeat. Samir would look truly like a wild thing then, like he’d never been part of the world Before. He already looked that way, in a sense. He walked with his shoes tied by the laces and slung over his neck, and his eyes betrayed a leeriness that was not clouded with the clumsy fear Bo saw in the rest of their companions.

When Bo asked where he was from, Samir had given him a look like he should know better than to ask, because that was so unreal now that it couldn’t possibly matter. All the same, he’d replied politely with “Worcester.”

When Bo asked him to come closer to the fire, he refused, even when Bo pushed. The best he could do was get him to take a can of tuna. The desire to bring him closer to their ranks and protect him ate at Bo, but Samir was aloof, and kept it that way.

Charles dug in his coat pocket and came up with a blue M&M, popped it in his mouth to suck on.

Bo’s mouth watered despite himself. They’d been down to canned green beans and watery oatmeal for three days. The last small town they’d come across had been completely ransacked, corpses propped eerily so they peered, lifeless, out of windows. Whoever’d come before them ruined whatever they couldn’t carry, strewing food in the streets for animals to pick over until it rotted in the autumn sun.

“They aren’t normal wolves. You know that, right?”

Charles sucked his cheeks in, worked his tongue over the lone M&M. “Fucks that supposed to mean, they aint ‘normal wolves’? They’ve just come south and gotten bold, is all.”

Bo shook his head. “No. It’s something else. They’re…”

How could he say it? _They are not ordinary wolves. They have the eyes of their Master._

“The Dark Man,” Bo said softly. “He sent them. He… controls them. Somehow.”

Charles’ face was supposed to be mocking, but Bo had seen the shimmer of fear cross it. “You can’t be serious.”

But Bo thought Charles knew it too, despite the reaction. They’d all dreamed of Him, in one way or another. The fear was magnified to gigantic proportions in sleep, a terror so fierce it would wake you wailing, or frozen on your back, jaw locked. Or warm all over, like you’d been rubbed in honey, with your hand down your sleeping bag, on the edge of coming. Bo’d had that one, too, though he didn’t like to think too hard what that could mean, only that he’d been left with a mantra in his head and a yearning in his chest.

_My life for you._

“Have it your way, then.” He turned away from Charles and the fire to crawl into his sleeping bag with an empty belly. He watched Charles from a distance for some time, a dark shape against the reddish glow, occasionally reaching into his pocket and popping another M&M into his mouth.

He slipped into dreams of giving Samir a six-foot wolf pelt, of draping it around him like a cloak. If he would not come close to the fire, he could still be warm.

***

Samir clung to sleep, as he often did now. He’d never had dreams so vivid, so full. He knew they were the work of the Dark Man, even when the Dark Man himself could not be with him.

He was very busy, after all.

But he missed Samir as much as Samir missed him, and so he gifted him with dreams of flying, of having no body at all. Samir could rise out of the womb of the earth with the morning mist and whirl across the desert, over the Rockies whose beauty made him weep, past the flatlands and scrub brush like oil paints on canvas— all the way to the new world the Dark Man was building for them, one that would rise from the ashes of the old and raze the Unbelievers like ancient Sodom.

He could walk on feet or paws through a tall palace that belonged to some now-dead businessman, belonged to them all now, belonged to the Dark Man, as surely as Samir did.

On hands and knees or floating gracefully in the air like a hummingbird, he could nuzzle his Master’s knee and feel the Dark Man’s hand in his hair, or his feathers, or his dry gills, and the ecstasy that flowed through him then was more than he’d ever known. He shivered at the approving noises made down at him, the affection with which his Master returned his devotion.

“Soon, little one,” the Dark Man said in his ordinary, human voice with his ordinary, human mouth. Samir shuddered in pleasure. “Soon, my wolf cub.”

He groaned in dismay as he woke damp in his sleeping bag, sweaty at the temples and the armpits, in the grey light of dawn.

Past his own human-sweat he caught the gamey whiff of wolf. He opened his eyes, privately mourning the loss of the Dark Man’s hands on him, the sound of His voice. He’d chosen a rocky hill to sleep on, where he could see the other’s fire down below, but still be closer to the stars and therefore the Dark Man, so the dreams could reach him best like a radio signal to an antenna. A great black wolf stood next to the trunk of a spruce tree, watching him with head lowered.

Samir placed his palms on the cold, damp rock, pushed himself out of his sleeping bag like a cobra so he was eye to eye with the wolf. He peered closer, and saw in the center of those big yellow eyes the silhouette of his own reflection. Deeper than that- miragelike- a red flaw.

A signature.

“My life for you,” he whispered reverently.

The wolf opened its mouth and panted, ears swiveling before it spun a tight circle and disappeared back into the underbrush.

***

Samir twisted his ankle the day the weather turned.

Izzy saw the sky spitting snow first, stopped in her tracks as if she’d seen heads on spikes up ahead.

Charles came behind her, holding Sky’s little hand. Sky stopped to see what the fuss was, gasped in wonder at the fat white flakes drifting towards them past the boughs of trees. Charles smiled down at her, stuck out his tongue to try and catch one. Her eyes widened in glee and she mirrored him, waiting to catch a snowflake of her own.

The others had seen it up ahead, stopped to speculate a moment too. Charles waved to them to wait longer and Jim raised a hand in acknowledgment.

Bo looked up at the gray cloud cover, promising more snow. It was bad news and they all knew it, except for little Sky, who was only nine.

“I got one!” She exclaimed, breaking away from Charles’ hand and jumping up and down in excitement.

“A little unseasonable,” Izzy commented. “Maybe it’s a fluke.”

“Either way,” Bo said, “We’ve got to get South.” He looked to Charles for support.

Before he could reply, Bo looked over his shoulder. His face dropped. Charles turned to see what had caught his eye and saw Samir bringing up the rear of their line with a pronounced limp. His face was pale, arms wrapped around his stomach defensively.

Bo jogged toward him. Samir said something to him that Charles didn’t catch before his eyes rolled white and he went limp. Bo caught him, scooped him up behind the knees and shoulders and bridal carried him to the shelter of a nearby pine, laying him against the base.

Izzy began to comfort Sky, who had stopped spinning in circles and was watching with widening eyes.

“It’s okay,” Charles said. “I got it, Izzy. Stay with her.”

Bo was talking quietly with Samir when Charles approached, squatted on his heels beside them. “What’s wrong with him?”

Samir’s dark eyes kept closing, as if it was a struggle to keep them open.

“Just a rolled ankle,” Bo said. “And hunger. And exhaustion.”

Charles sighed, tapped Samir’s cheek to wake him up.

“Hey,” Bo said sharply.

Charles shrugged. Samir’s eyes fluttered open, went back and forth between the two of them. He tried to move his leg and winced.

“Shh,” Bo soothed, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move it. I’m gonna get it wrapped up.”

Charles cocked an eyebrow. “Then what?”

Bo fixed him with a look.

“I’ll keep up,” Samir said. Charles wasn’t used to hearing his voice.

“You’ll try,” he remarked dryly.

“The hell he will,” Bo snapped. Charles could see the flinty stubbornness in his eyes, the look he’d expected but hadn’t come when it was time to deal with Mr Landon. Bo very rarely cursed, and never more than an old-fashioned sounding hell or goddam. He didn’t want to be in charge. He just wanted to be second-in-charge, so he didn’t have to make the bad calls. The hard ones. Yet for some reason today this quiet, weird boy they picked up in western Mass was the hill he’d decided to die on.

“You gonna carry him, Bozo?”

Samir flinched like Charles had slapped him. He understood the implication— we’re leaving you. He steeled himself from guilt by thinking of Izzy and little Sky, the bad weather. He wouldn’t let this dude’s lame foot compromise the girl’s safety.

“Yeah, actually,” Bo said, grinning. “I can carry him.”

“Bullshit.” Charles stood. “We’re gonna track the road until we can get to a southern route. Maybe get some cars. Or a truck, for everyone.“

They hadn’t gotten a working car since Mass, and the roads had been too clogged to get more than thirty miles before they’d had to ditch it. And there were four more of them now, Samir and Jim and his wife Sylvia and their nephew.

“Give me five minutes to wrap his ankle and we’ll be right behind you.”

Charles snorted, walked back over to the girls. He knelt in front of Sky and produced an M&M from his pocket with a flourish, watching her worried face change back into a smile.

He heard Samir’s whimper of pain and turned to see Bo mumbling apologies, trying to tug up the leg of the other boy’s pants to see the damage. “Easy.” He soothed. “I know.”

He had the bedside manner of a cattle farmer, talking to Samir like he was a spooked horse. Where’d he say he was from? Northern Maine? Potato farming, more like it. Bo the Bozo. On second thought, it might’ve been upstate New York.

_Carry him._

He was crazy.

***

The dreams were not all good.

Sometimes he dreamed he was back home, the apartment by the train tracks. The pattern of the curtain was familiar, and a breeze blew gently on his hot forehead. He shook, and when the shaking subsided he sweat, sometimes in tears with the inescapable heat.

Someone spoke to him, put something cool on his brow. Was it the Dark Man? Why was his Master letting him suffer? He’d been shown the suffering of others, the people nailed to crosses in the desert who screamed as the nails bit through the bones of their hands, yes. But that was only to show what had to be done. That was only to remind the others of His great power. That was not for Samir, for those who were Loyal and Good.

He thought it was his middle-school tormentors from all those years ago, led by Sam Cochran, pinning him in the dugout by the baseball field. Then he thought it was that sly-eyed Charles Fairweather, who was content to leave him to die in the woods from a rolled ankle. But Sam’s round, mean face kept coming into view, a field of blue sky behind his head, September light like a halo.

“No,” he pleaded weakly. “Sa-Sam, don’t….”

“Shhh,” a man’s voice said. “It’s alright, Samir. You’re safe. You’re with friends.”

Once, when his fever came deceptively down, he could see clearly that it was Bo Alexander who was touching him, and had used some of his own drinking water to wet a cloth and press it to Samir’s burning forehead.

Bo had dark blue eyes, strong forearms and hands calloused by work from a young age. Samir thought he might be the true leader of their band of plague-survivors, though he half-remembered a dream where Charles shot a man execution style on a sunny morning. Bo had watched with his hands clasped stoically behind his back as if he were attending a funeral.

Bo’s eyes were gentle. As were his hands. “You’re alright,” he said, quite unlike the childhood bully Samir had been hallucinating before.

“You… you’re not Sam Cochran.”

Bo huffed. “No, ‘fraid not. But I’m gonna look after you.”

Samir let his head fall back. Statistically speaking, Sam Chochran was likely good and dead. Again, Bo pressed the cool cloth to his temple. He wondered if Bo would bother for just anyone, on principle, or if there was something else to it. Maybe the Dark Man made him turn his ankle to get him away from these people… maybe they were slowing him down…or had he sent Bo in lieu of himself, like he’d sent the wolves? Was Bo a Believer? Were they in service to the same Master?

“You… why did you let Charles shoot that man?” he asked. “Who was he? What did he do?”

The softness drained from Bo’s face. “What did you say? Who told you that?”

“The Dark…” his vision was swimming again. “Dark Man.”

Bo must’ve realized he was slipping into delirium. The coldness eased from his face and he looked sympathetic again. “Just rest,” he said. “Doesn’t matter who told you. I won’t let anybody hurt you. Not even the goddam Dark Man.”

Samir had to smile at that. Nobody could stop the Dark Man from doing exactly as He pleased. Dontcha know, Bo?

He slipped back to dreams.

***

“Leave him.”

“No.”

Charles leaned in the doorway, drinking syrup from a can of peaches. Jim and Sylvia found a house with a freezer full of venison they’d defrosted and was now sizzling in a pan in the other room.

“That cut’s gonna kill him.”

“Not with antibiotics. He just needs a few days.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “And wait to get snowed in? You want to gamble on that?”

Samir moaned, reached for Bo in his drugged sleep. Bo brushed his dark hair back from his forehead, murmured to him that it was alright.

Charles sighed. “One man down and you’re playing nurse. What’s he to you? We found him starving on the goddam turnpike, Bo, he’s a stranger.”

“If he’s a stranger, so are you,” Bo replied tightly. “So am I. So’s Izzy, and Sky.”

“Classy. Don’t drag the kid into this.”

“I’m serious. Where do we draw the line, if none of us matters? I’d like to think if it were me who slipped and rolled my foot you wouldn’t leave me for the coyotes to pick over. Or can you just afford not to care because you know we wouldn’t leave you?”

Charles worried the inside of the cheek with his teeth. Bo could see his gears turning, like he was choosing his words carefully. They all had lost people, most of them lost everyone, with the very strange exception of the husband and wife duo they’d met along the way. That was like winning the lotto. One in ten million.

“Charles?” Sky ran down the hallway and slid to a stop in her socks. She took his elbow, beamed up at him. “Sylvia says supper.”

Charles’ eyes softened as he lay a hand on her hair. “Supper?” he parroted, letting his jaw drop in shock. “Oh my goodness, I haven’t heard that word in ages. Lead the way.” He steered them away, pointedly not glancing back at Bo or Samir.

Izzy brought Bo a plate. “You’re doin’ the right thing,” she said. Her hair was clean, face scrubbed. She was wearing a red sweater from some dead woman’s closet that made her hair look copper. “Taking care of Samir.”

“Thanks.” He put a piece of venison in his mouth with his fingers. He wished Samir was well enough to eat while he had something other than oatmeal to offer him.

“Charles will wait a few days.”

“You sure about that?”

“Mhm. Everyone else is with you on that. He’s just scared.”

Bo swallowed, reached for another strip of lean, earthy meat. “Join the club.”

***

Samir approached the palace in the desert, the one with the fountain out front. They’d taken down the old signs that used to flash gaudy neon, and in their place two tall crosses stood, bloodied in places where the Unfaithful had been nailed up, hands and feet.

The moon was huge, lantern-yellow. He passed the sentries. They did not see him, for his body was asleep in a farmhouse in Western Pennsylvania. Besides, he belonged here. He belonged to their Master.

The elevators still hung in their shafts like the pulleys of dead giants. The lights were not back on yet, but they were close. Every day they were closer to restoring power to the city.

The time is not yet, but it is soon.

Soon, soon, soon, Samir whispered as he wound up flights of stairs and stopped at what he knew to be the correct door. Inside he could feel the hum of his master, the red flaw that had been in the eyes of the wolves.

“Samir.”

Yes.

Samir was his true form this time, or his person form rather, standing just over five foot ten and with a pretty mop top of dark hair, a wide freckled nose, lips parted in what must’ve been an almost dopey grin, but the Dark Man did not seem to mind. He waved him closer.

He wore a navy sports jacket, a wristwatch. His face was astoundingly ordinary— his hands had such warmth as they reached up and cupped Samir’s face. Samir blinked slowly.

“Little wolf cub.” The Dark Man grew stern. “Did you try and do yourself in? Had a fall, and a nasty cut?”

Samir’s sleepy smile faltered. “Master?”

“Did you think you could avoid serving me in death? Is that it?”

Samir frowned, which squished his face in the Dark Man’s grip. He thought the Dark Man had caused him to fall… it had been so sudden, so unlike him to lose his footing. Had it been only his own clumsiness, truly?

“I would never,” he breathed, hurt.

The Dark Man’s eyes narrowed in a grin. “Ah, I can’t. Normally I like to see what they do when I put them on a fishhook but you…” Samir unconsciously chased the touch when the Dark Man let him go. “You’re in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. Or used to.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Hush. I know. I was playing with you. Would you like to see something?”

The Dark Man pressed a button on a walkie talkie and two men entered through the double doors, came in a few strides and stopped, bowing stiffly. They had rifles strapped over their shoulders.

“I heard there was an incident.”

The soldiers eyed each other uneasily, shifted their feet. “Sir…”

“Kline,” the Dark Man said icily.

The man on the right stepped forward, staring at a spot on the carpet in front of the Dark Man’s feet. “Sir.”

“Look at me.”

Slowly, as if fighting the urge to run back out the doors, the man dragged his chin up, followed by lifting his eyes. The Dark Man tilted his head the barest fraction.

The second soldier watched in thinly veiled terror as his comrade stiffened, transfixed. He lilted forward as his mouth went slack and his eyes grew wide like a melting wax dummy. The Dark Man was showing him something, or had hypnotized him, or both.

He stared at the Dark man and the Dark Man stared at him. The soldier began to drool. His pupils grew larger and his eyes more fixed, and then he began to laugh— a horrible, shrill sound.

The other soldier dropped his eyes back to the floor, hands clasped in front of him. The Dark Man smiled faintly as the soldier’s laughter grew more fevered in pitch, his eyes emptier and wider. Drool dripped from his chin to the carpet. Samir thought he smelled burnt wiring, thought the sound of Brahms was playing softly in his own head, as if from another room.

The Dark Man blinked and turned away. The soldier’s knees buckled and he fell in a heap, eyes lolling, mad and vacant. The Dark Man snapped a finger and the soldier still standing rushed forward to gather the other under the armpits, dragged him backwards out the door.

Samir realized his Master was not wearing fine shoes but rather boots, and that there were bits of mud tracked in on the carpet. He tugged at the sleeve of his coat to smooth a wrinkle.

“Well, Samir? How was that?”

“Did you play the music in my head, Sir?”

“You heard.”

“I love that piece.”

“I know.” The Dark Man drew him close, held him by the nape of the neck. He petted Samir, touching the waves of his hair until Samir felt the pull of ecstatic relief like a tide, and lay his head on his Master’s shoulder.

“I’ve sent you the medicine you need. When you’re well, you will do one small thing for me.”

Samir would do any number of things for the Dark Man, large or small. He sighed deeply against his Master’s chest, home at last, and whispered, “My life for you.”


End file.
